months back, Rory had come by to see Thomas. He’d used the ramp that Thomas and Marcus had included in the house updates right after they purchased it to access the porch.
Seeing the front door standing open behind the screen, Rory had pushed into the living room, calling out. Nothing. The house was empty. They weren’t in the nearby barn, where Thomas had his loft art studio and Marcus his home office, but the cars were under the port. Which meant they were likely on the back porch.
The door to that was open, allowing a cross breeze through the house. Because the adjacent windows were also open, he glimpsed Marcus and Thomas before they were aware of him.
Thomas was against the wooden porch railing, clutching it on either side of him in white knuckled hands. Marcus had him pressed up against it. His strong hand was wrapped around Thomas’s throat as his lips cruised over his cheek.
Rory started to retreat, fast, but before he did, he heard Thomas utter a single word.
Rory hadn’t needed to see Marcus’s face that day to know what expression it wore. The satisfied growl of response had told him.
The fevered look Thomas sent toward Marcus was one Rory wanted to see on Daralyn’s face. And that word… Rory had never heard it used by anyone in his world. Yet it had come back to him again and again since then. Only in his imaginings it came from Daralyn’s lips, said in the same way Thomas had said it to Marcus.
With desperate yearning, but also an absolute certainty that the person who owned that word could answer that yearning and desperation.
“Master.”
So yeah, he needed to talk to Marcus. No matter his aversion to learning more about his brother’s sex life than he really wanted to know, he wouldn’t dive deeper into uncharted territory with just a gut feeling. No way was he going to risk fucking with Daralyn’s head.
That said, he also didn’t want to treat her like china. He knew better than most not to assume someone was too fragile to handle something because of what they’d been through.
The way she’d teased him just now, about having other things to think about than that kiss? That had been damn close to flirting. Like she might one day feel safe enough to mouth off at him, the playful way a woman did when she felt safe with a man.
He wanted to kill her uncle and father for treating her the ways they had, but she’d been stronger than the both of them. He believed in her strength.
He was a man who wanted to treat Daralyn like a woman. She could tease, defy or confront him all she wanted. He’d never hurt her. He’d celebrate that confidence, even as he’d challenge it, in ways she might just crave. Maybe she needed that.
He had an unsettling feeling he sure as hell did.
Chapter Two
After he closed the store for the day, Rory decided to settle himself by doing his evening workout, a few miles on his bike on the Hickman Road loop. Then he transferred to his regular chair and headed for Thomas and Marcus’s place.
By road, they were a few miles away, but as the crow flew, it was a matter of crossing several fields. During the growing season, they offered sweet potato, watermelon or squash crops. When they were little, he and his siblings played with kids on those farms, so they’d worn down a regular path between the fields. Now there was a paved pedestrian and bike path, part of a county-wide greenway project funded by taxes.
As Rory left the path and crossed the road to Marcus and Thomas’s driveway, his gaze went to the guest house on their property. Daralyn’s house.
When Thomas and Marcus bought the Hill place, it had included a rambling farmhouse, a barn and an outbuilding, plus a few fenced acres. The outbuilding had been renovated into a guest house that included a bedroom, living area, kitchenette and bath, as well as a screened patio. All cozy-sized, the whole place about a thousand square feet.
They’d offered it to Daralyn, her first home on her own. In exchange, she cleaned Marcus and Thomas’s place and house-sat for them when they were in New York. Despite her protests, they also paid her for that work.
She loved the little house, and had decorated it to her tastes. Strings of white lights lit up the patio area, more noticeable with the sun going down. She’d bought